Wembley Flashback: When play-off glory belonged to Dean Windass and Hull City

HIS volley has gone down in Hull sporting folklore. It is also a goal any Tigers fan can surely recite in their sleep.
Hull City's Dean Windass lifts the Championship play off trophy after the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)Hull City's Dean Windass lifts the Championship play off trophy after the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)
Hull City's Dean Windass lifts the Championship play off trophy after the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)

But, when Dean Windass attempted to recreate his winning strike from the 2008 Championship play-off final just a couple of weeks ago with Fraizer Campbell on City’s post-season tour of Kenya, the former team-mates struggled horribly.

“It took us an hour and about 100 goes to pull it off,” laughed the 49-year-old, now an ambassador for the club he served in two spells, as he spoke to The Yorkshire Post earlier this week when relaxing in his native Hull. “Fraizer’s crossing was abysmal. He couldn’t get it right at all.

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“And when he did, I made a total mess of my volley. The ball was going all over the place until we finally got one right. I suppose it shows the goal wasn’t that easy, first time around.”

Hull City's manager Phil Brown (l) celebrates winning the Championship play offs in the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)Hull City's manager Phil Brown (l) celebrates winning the Championship play offs in the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)
Hull City's manager Phil Brown (l) celebrates winning the Championship play offs in the Coca-Cola Championship Play Off Final at Wembley Stadium, London. (Picture: PA)

Indeed. Campbell’s floated cross from the left side of the six-yard area that May afternoon at Wembley was good. But Windass, by first holding his position 18 yards out as the Bristol City defence were drawn inexorably towards their own goal-line and then unleashing a volley so perfect it would grace any textbook, was the man who turned such a promising delivery into a £60m cash windfall for the club he had first watched from the South Stand at the age of just five.

“I honestly thought there was someone behind me,” he adds. “That is why I hit it first time. Usually, I would have taken a touch and then had a shot but I honestly thought there was a defender right behind me. Plus, I was knackered after running all that way from our own half!

“I knew the moment I hit it that the ball was going in. It is like a golfer who hits a drive sweetly, he can then bend down and pick up the tee knowing that the next time he looks up the ball is going to be in the middle of the fairway. That is how I felt when I hit that volley. There was no way the ’keeper (Adriano Basso) was stopping it.”

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The crowning moment of a never-to-be-forgotten season for the Tigers came 10 years ago this week. It was the first instalment of a White Rose double-header that also saw Leeds United and Doncaster Rovers do battle the following day in the League One play-off final.

Magic moment: Hull City's Dean Windass volleys home the winning goal at Wembley.Magic moment: Hull City's Dean Windass volleys home the winning goal at Wembley.
Magic moment: Hull City's Dean Windass volleys home the winning goal at Wembley.

Just a year earlier, Windass had scored the winner at Cardiff City that sent Leeds down to the third tier and saved Hull. To go from there to the Premier League, via a takeover led by Paul Duffen during the summer of 2007, in such a short space of time was nothing short of remarkable.

Along the way, there had been a first £1m signing in Caleb Folan, plus the capture of two-time African footballer of the year Jay-Jay Okocha.

Above all, though, there was the glorious uprising of what Duffen famously dubbed the ‘Tiger Nation’ as dreams held by generations of supporters over the years finally became reality via a swish of Windass’s right boot.

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Hull’s season had, in fact, been something of a slow-burner. Phil Brown’s men were still in the bottom half of the table a week before Christmas, while it was not until early March that the East Riding club barged its way into the top six.

Once there, however, there was to be no let-up as the momentum carried City all the way to the play-offs and a 6-1 aggregate victory over Watford in the semi-finals.

At last, Wembley beckoned. Duffen, very much the public face of a consortium that also included businessmen Russell Bartlett and Martin Walker, recalls: “The fact it was the club’s very first time at Wembley and the fact the club had never even been in a final helped take the pressure off.

“Instead, the day was all about celebrating the club and all those generations who had supported it down the years.

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“Some fans even took along photographs of those unable to share in such a special day. For me, it felt like a religious experience. We had broken new ground as a club and Wembley was seen, at the time, as the summit of our expectation. That is what took the pressure off.

“I certainly didn’t feel any, even though I knew this was probably our one shot at promotion. We would have had a very modest budget the following season had we not gone up.”

This relaxed air stretched to the players, even if Windass was given something of a fright by his manager during the build-up.

“I was not up to playing Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday and I knew that,” recalls the former striker, by the time of the final almost two months into his 40th year. “Plus, there was me, Caleb (Folan) and Fraizer. So, I understood it when Phil left me on the bench.

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“For the final, though, I was desperate to play. So, when I saw Phil walking towards me one day after training – which usually meant a manager was going to give you bad news – my heart sank.

“It had become something of a standing joke between us during the season, that when Phil headed in my direction on a pre-match walk for the lads, I would quickly turn the other way.

“This time, though, I didn’t move. All I could think was: ‘Please, no, don’t leave me out for Wembley’. It had happened to me before at Sheffield United (in 2003 at the Millennium Stadium) and I was devastated.

“Thankfully, Phil said I was in and that he wanted a big hour or 65 minutes from me. I replied – and I don’t know why I said it – ‘I’ll get a goal for you on Saturday’.

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“As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I thought: ‘Why have you said that?’ But Phil just said: ‘I know you will’. I felt 10-feet tall.”

Windass’s big moment came seven minutes before half-time. After that, it was all about preserving City’s lead as, first, Michael Turner bravely threw himself in front of a goalbound shot from Lee Trundle and then substitute Darren Byfield was twice denied as Bristol City threw everything at the Tigers in a desperate attempt to take the final to extra-time. By now, Windass had been withdrawn and he watched those final few minutes alongside fellow Hullensian Nick Barmby on the bench.

“My life changed in that moment,” added the former striker, who in 2012 tried to take his own life after suffering from depression following the end of his career. “Both good and bad. Winning the game and getting to the Premier League with the team I had always supported was brilliant.

“Seeing the pleasure it gave people was great, too. It helped put Hull on the map again and brought a lot of money into the city.

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“The other side of a moment like that is you are on cloud nine and the only way from there is down. This is what happened to me, and once I stopped playing the depression hit me like a train.

“My biggest regret is I didn’t retire, there and then. I had a year left on my contract but I should have walked away at Wembley. Hindsight, of course, is a wonderful thing. Phil wanted me to stay and I wanted another crack at the Premier League. But things just didn’t work out and, in a way, I am still trying to get my life back on track.

“That, though, is life sometimes and I do find it nice that people remember the goal. I don’t bring it up. Not at all. I would be laughed out of any pub in Hull if I walked in and said: ‘Did anyone see my goal?’ But people do come up to me and talk about what Wembley means to them. I like that.”